Developer portal The Android Academy has started issuing certificates to those who know their Nexus-6 from their Max 404, and are prepared to pay £150 to prove it.

The Android Academy is a spin-off from software development house OTAMate, and has been offering registration and hookup services for Android developers since 2009, but now it will also provide suitably proficient developers with a certificate to adorn their CV for an introductory price of £100, rising to £150 at the end of June.

The testing is handled by Steely Eye Digital Media, which ran the tests for the Symbian Academy and is using the same dynamically adjusted questioning which ensures everyone gets different questions, and uses the quality of one's replies to dictate the complexity of subsequent questions.

The Symbian Academy was backed by Symbian itself, and provided free course material for universities with the promise of expert lecturers, as well as the "Accredited Symbian Developer Programme" for which Steely Eye managed the testing (while Symbian collected the £150).

How valuable the certificate will be to developers will depend on how employers value it, which in turn depends on them having heard of it. The Android Academy reckons it’s the industry's first accreditation scheme for Android developers, and it certainly can't hurt on a CV, but whether it's worth a hundred quid is more open to question. ®